Unprecedented
by Carrabasse953
Summary: Harry gives John and Sherlock some very surprising news, and they discover an... interesting way of dealing with it. Eventual John/Sherlock
1. Chapter 1

Dr John Watson had been home for all of thirty seconds when the phone rang. He considered yelling for Sherlock to get it, since he hadn't even taken off his coat yet, but he knew that interrupting Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective extraordinaire, was practically a cardinal sin. He scrambled across the flat and grabbed the phone off the wall. "Hello?" He said, trying to keep the edge of irritation – at Sherlock and the world at large - out of his voice.

"Hey Johnny," John almost dropped the phone. It took him a few seconds to overcome the shock enough to speak.

"Harry," He choked out, finally. He hadn't seen or spoken to his sister since their obligatory and very awkward visit after his return from Afghanistan. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why she'd decided to call now. "How are you?" John asked. He tried to sound casual, as if he and Harry were the kind of siblings who called each other on a regular basis.

"I'm pretty good, thanks. And you?" She answered. John was pretty sure that Harry hadn't called just to chat, and a sick feeling was growing in his stomach as he wondered if something had happened to their mother.

"Look Harry, it's lovely to speak to you again, but would you please cut to the chase?" John snapped. He knew it sounded rude, but he thought Harry shouldn't be able to call him out of the blue, after spending most of her life ignoring him, and expect him not to ask questions.

"Ok John, I'll admit I probably deserved that." Harry said, her voice sounding weary and slightly hurt. "I know I haven't been around much, but I miss you. I'm just calling to ask if you want to get together sometime soon. You know, to catch up." Now there was something that John had definitely not seen coming. He was pretty sure that over the course of their entire shared life, Harry had never actually made an effort to see him.

"Really?" John asked. He couldn't help worrying that this was another one of the cruel jokes that Harry had played on him all through their childhood. He would probably always remember the time twelve year old Harry had finally invited nine year old John into her secret club - which he'd spent months begging for access to - then rigged a complicated booby trap in the club house that had left him soaking wet and humiliated. It had been years since she'd played one on him, but with Harry you just never knew.

"Of course," She said. "So, are you free tomorrow night? I would suggest we go for a pint, but seeing as I've been sober for four months now, I think that might be kind of counter-productive." As if John hadn't had enough surprises in the last five minutes, now Harry was telling him that she was sober?

"Does that mean you've actually been going to your AA meetings?" John asked. Harry had always refused all of John's pleas that she get help for her drinking problem, claiming that AA "is for pathetic sods with nothing to live for."

"Yeah I have. Better call The London Times and inform them of this shocking development!" Harry said sarcastically. "So, are we on for tomorrow then? I don't want to invite myself over, but I would like to see your new flat. I'll be over around six, okay?" John chuckled, caught between annoyance and begrudging affection, how very like Harry to say that she didn't want to invite herself over, and then proceed to do just that.

"Um, alright," John said. He was honestly too shaken up by all that had just happened to think about refusing. "See you then."

"See you, Johnny." Harry said, and the line went dead. _What the hell was that?_ John wondered, hanging up the phone and leaning against the wall. He ran through all the strangeness of the phone conversation in his mind. Harry calling him at all was weird enough, but Harry announcing that she'd been sober for four months and actually making plans to meet up with him was completely unprecedented. And then there was the fact that Sherlock and Harry were going to be in the same place at the same time the next night. It was mind-boggling to John that Harry, a souvenir from his childhood, and Sherlock, the main component of the ridiculous new life that he was currently claiming to be his own, could exist in the same universe - let alone the same room.

He walked into the living room to inform his eccentric, misanthropic flatmate of his unusual plans for the following evening. He knew that Sherlock would want to be warned so that he could conveniently be out of the flat before Harry arrived, as interaction with other humans was not exactly the consulting detective's strongpoint. Sherlock was sitting in the armchair, absorbed in some kind of experiment that, worryingly, seemed to involve human eyeballs and several bright coloured chemicals. He looked up when John entered the room.

"Sherlock, Harry's coming by tomorrow evening." John said. He waited for Sherlock to make some kind of remark about how John shouldn't invite people over to the flat when Sherlock was conducting his unspeakably important experiments.

"Yes, John. I figured as much from your end of the phone conversation that just happened." Sherlock said. That didn't surprise John. Sherlock wouldn't have been Sherlock if he wasn't using the most mundane circumstances to show off his powers of deduction – even with simple things like this. "I think I'll join you. Could be interesting." For a minute, John considered pinching himself to make sure he wasn't having some extremely bizarre dream. Since moving in with Sherlock several months before, even the most preposterous situations had started to seem normal, but this was by far the strangest he'd experienced so far. Harry was sober and wanted to see him, and Sherlock was voluntarily interacting with other people! He wondered if it was a sign of the apocalypse.

"Sherlock, you do realize you just agreed to spend time with another human being, right?" John asked, still incredulous. "I thought that went against your religion." Sherlock raised his eyebrows and tore himself away from his experiment long enough to give John an annoyed look.

"Really John, you must have noticed by now that my work is not a religion." Sherlock said. "Religion is for people who aren't smart enough to come up with logical explanations for things by themselves. I mean, look at Christianity. At the time, technology wasn't advanced enough for people to have any idea how the universe came to be, so someone came up with the idea that some deity created the whole bloody thing in seven days. It's completely ridiculous. My work and my lifestyle are based on fact, not fantastical explanations for things that I know nothing about! " Sherlock was practically yelling now and John was slightly taken aback. He couldn't quite believe that his offhand comment had caused Sherlock to go on an anti-religion rant.

"I'm not questioning your religious beliefs. I'm just asking why you want to spend time with Harry. I don't even particularly want to, and I'm considerably more social than you. Not to mention that she's related to me." John said carefully. He didn't want to accidently set Sherlock off again. Luckily his volatile flatmate seemed to have calmed down. He raised an eyebrow at John.

"The fact that she's related to you is precisely why I want to meet her. The relationships between siblings are so deliciously complicated and completely different from any other kind. Of course I want to study them. You never know when it might come in handy on a case." Sherlock said. "Also, I think you're underestimating just how bored I am. It's been weeks since I've had a decent case." John shuddered slightly. He couldn't help remembering that the last "decent case" had involved being held hostage by a psychopath and strapped to a bomb in a darkened swimming pool. Maybe that had been interesting to Sherlock, but to John it had been the worst experience of his life – and that was including all his time spent in Afghanistan. The fact that Moriarty had escaped and could very well be biding his time for his next strike didn't do anything to improve John's opinion of the incident.

Sherlock turned his eyes back to his experiment, effectively ending the conversation. John felt a twinge of disappointment as he headed upstairs to his bedroom. He found himself wishing that Sherlock would let their conversations about things other than his cases go on for more than five minutes at a time. Even when Sherlock was at his worst, his conversation was better than the heavy silence that usually filled the flat in the stretches of time between cases. Still, he knew that bringing up anything even remotely personal with Sherlock was a resoundingly bad idea, so John resigned himself to another evening of unfulfilled silence.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Ok so this suddenly got a lot heavier than I was intending it to be. Oh well, hopefully I'll be able to lighten it up soon. There's some controversial subject matter in this chapter, so just keep that in mind. Neither Sherlock nor any of these characters belong to me.

At twenty after six the following evening, John heard Harry banging on the door. "Sherlock, would you please answer the door?" He yelled down from his bedroom. Normally, he wouldn't even have tried to get Sherlock to do it, but he figured that if the other man was so intent on studying the relationship dynamics between siblings, then the least he could do would be to let one of said siblings into the flat. Also, he was suddenly wracked with nerves with the idea of seeing his sister again. They'd never had the best relationship, and even though she seemed eager to bury the hatchet, he couldn't help worrying that the night would end badly.

And he was worried about Harry meeting Sherlock, if he was being honest with himself. Since they'd moved in together it seemed like everyone – from Mycroft to Mrs. Hudson – assumed that Sherlock and John were more than merely flatmates. As an out and proud lesbian, he was pretty sure that Harry would be even quicker to jump to conclusions than the others. The idea of being partners with Sherlock made him uncomfortable. Not because it was particularly far from the truth, but rather because he kept finding himself dwelling on that possibility when he let his mind wander. He couldn't help worrying that Harry would somehow pick up on what his usually observant flatmate had always missed, and let the cat out of the bag. John knew he wasn't ready for Sherlock to know what he was feeling - mostly because he didn't quite know himself.

John stood up and walked over to the stairs, exhaling slowly in an attempt to dispel his nerves. "Johnny, would you get your arse down here?" Harry yelled from downstairs. John smiled. It seemed that even all this time with almost no contact hadn't changed the way she interacted with him.

"You're hair's short." Was the first thing that John said to Harry. He knew that was probably not the correct thing to say to a sister you hadn't seen in months – probably something along the lines of "Hullo Harry, I've missed you" would have been more appropriate – but it was the first thing that came into his mind. And it was true – while Harry's dark blonde hair had always been long and straight, it was now cropped into a style that bore a striking resemblance to his own.

"Yeah it is." Harry said. She was smiling in a way that on a less imposing person could have been described as timid. John wanted desperately to run over and hug his sister; somehow seeing her in person had cleared up all his remaining anger at her. "You can hug me you know." Harry said. "I won't bite." John wondered if his sister had somehow read his mind. He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, feeling closer to her in this moment than he could ever remember feeling. John stole a glance at Sherlock and almost at laughed at the look of sheer annoyance on the consulting detective's face.

John pulled away from Harry and gestured toward Sherlock. "Harry, this is Sherlock, my flatmate." He said, trying his best to keep voice even.

"Yes, I know." Harry said. "We introduced ourselves while you were taking all that bloody time getting downstairs." John smiled, and then wondered uncomfortably what he was supposed to do now that they'd gotten the pleasantries out of the way. Luckily, Harry took that opportunity to break the silence. "You know, I was kind of hoping that my dear brother whom I haven't seen in months might deign to show me around his flat, but as it seems he'd rather stand here staring at the carpet, I suppose I'll have to show myself." Harry said, in a ridiculous, mock-hurt voice. John exhaled, infinitely grateful to Harry for lightening the tension while acknowledging it at the same time.

"Right, yeah. Sorry about that." John said, brilliantly. He led Harry through the flat, pointing things out along the way as if he were leading a guided tour through a museum. All the while, Sherlock trailed silently behind, apparently studying the way he and Harry interacted. All in all, Sherlock's presence was not making this situation any easier. After they'd completed the tour – skipping Sherlock's bedroom because John could never be sure what he'd find in there – the three of them found themselves at the kitchen table in yet another uncomfortable silence.

"Sherlock," Harry said, finally. "Is there a particular reason why you've been staring at me and John since I got here? I feel like I'm under a bloody microscope."

"Well, if you must know, I'm conducting an experiment." Sherlock said, as if this was the most normal thing in the world. "I'm examining first hand the complexities of sibling relationships." John groaned inwardly, couldn't Sherlock act like a normal human being for five minutes? Harry chuckled slightly.

"Mmm, I see. Found anything interesting?" She asked, sounding surprisingly blasé for a woman who was having an experiment conducted on her by a man she'd just met.

"Yes actually." Sherlock said. "For example, I've learned that you only use that dry, sarcastic wit of yours when you feel uncomfortable, that you're still having trouble getting used to your hair. And, if we're going to get into matters of personal appearance, that you can't stand the shirt you're wearing and wish that is was socially acceptable to take it off," Harry blinked incredulously at Sherlock, and John found himself faced with a rather pressing desire to punch the consulting detective in the face.

"I see." Harry said, an unreadable expression on her face. John floundered around for something to say that had a fighting chance of starting a normal conversation.

"So, Harry," He said finally. "Are you seeing anyone at the moment?" It wasn't exactly a normal thing to say completely out of the blue, but John knew that if there was one thing Harry could spend hours doing, it was ranting about her love life. This wasn't something that John normally enjoyed listening to, but at the moment it seemed preferable to an endless awkward silence.

"Nope," Harry said. "I was going out with a girl from work for a while, but it just sort of fizzled out. I've been in something of a dry spell since then." She reached up, and John recognized that she was attempting to brush her hair back behind her ears, something she always did when she felt uncomfortable. Once she actually touched her hair, she seemed to remember that she'd cut it, and put her hands back in her lap. "What about you, Johnny?" Harry asked after a few seconds of silence. "Are you seeing anyone special?" John desperately hoped he'd imagined her quickly flicking her eyes over to Sherlock when she said it.

"Yeah I am, actually." John said, clearing his throat. This time he was almost sure he didn't imagine Harry glance at the consulting detective. "Her name's Sarah." He said, making sure to put extra emphasis on the words _her _and _Sarah._ "I started working at a clinic a few months ago. She's one of the doctors there." Harry grinned wickedly.

"What does she look like?" She asked eagerly. John hesitated, suddenly finding it strangely difficult to conjure up a picture of her in his mind.

"Um, long dark blonde hair," He said. "Blue eyes, fairly average height." _Nothing all that special_ was the phrase that popped into his head next. John bit his lip. Why did he just think that? Sarah was his girlfriend. He was supposed to think she was gorgeous and that he was the luckiest man in the world. John was pretty sure it wasn't normal to think of your girlfriend as "nothing all that special".

"Sounds hot," Harry said, nodding appreciatively. "Careful John, I might steal her from you." John smiled weakly back at her and glanced across the table at Sherlock. The consulting detective was leaning forward, watching them intently; his ice blue eyes open wide. John blinked hard and looked back at Harry, trying to put Sherlock's disconcerting stare out of his mind. The conversation dragged on as John and Harry covered every classic small talk subject in the book. As the evening wore on, John couldn't help notice that his sister getting more and more uncomfortable; after Harry had gotten to the point that she was smoothing back her hair after every sentence, Sherlock spoke up for the first time all evening.

"Harry, it's obvious you have something important you want to tell John, I can practically feel the nerves radiating off you. So why don't you just tell him? I get the feeling it would make this evening infinitely more interesting." Harry glared at Sherlock. John swallowed hard, thinking about how bad something would have to be to make the unflappable Harriet Watson nervous. The silence dragged on for what felt like several years as John came up with progressively worse ideas of what his sister was going to tell him, Harry sat in her chair and sweated, and Sherlock glared impatiently at both of them.

"John," Harry said finally, her voice softer than John had ever heard it. "I want you to try really hard to accept this. It might take a while, I'll wait. I'll go away and never speak to you again if that's what you want. But before you make any judgments I just want you to hear me out, then you can feel free to kick me out." John squirmed in his chair. The speech his sister was currently giving him was oddly reminiscent of the one she'd given him before she told him she was gay. He tried to think of some reason for why that could be – he would have thought that once you'd come out of the closet, anything else you had to tell someone would be easy in comparison. "Only, just, even if you do kick me out," Harry continued after a pause. "Could you please not tell mum? I mean, I want to tell her myself, I don't want her hearing it from you." John nodded. Even if she hadn't have told him not to, John doubted he would have been brave enough to tell his mother. For such a small woman, Elisabeth Watson was surprisingly intimidating, especially after receiving the kind of news that he was pretty sure Harry was about to tell him. John couldn't help remembering the furious phone call he'd gotten after Harry had told her she was gay, demanding to know whether he'd known anything about it.

"But, anyway," Harry continued, her voice shaking slightly now. "God, this is harder than I thought. I had this whole speech planned out, but now it's just going out the window. But, yeah, so, um, anyway," There was then an even longer and more painful pause as Harry seemed to psych herself up to say whatever it was. John was really worried now. He no longer pretended to have any idea what Harry was going to say, but he knew it couldn't be anything good. "John, I'm a boy." Is what Harry finally managed to choke out.

At first John didn't have the faintest idea what that meant. He had the idea that this was like one of those stories where a girl disguised herself as a boy in order to join the army or something, only in this version it was a boy dressing up as girl. It didn't take long for John to realize that this was completely impossible. Harry was his sister. He'd shared a room with her for the first eight years of his life, John was pretty sure he would have noticed if Harry had really been a boy in disguise. But what other meaning could possibly be taken from that sentence? Was "I'm a boy" some new slang phrase that he'd never heard before?

"Harry, can you please tell me what the fuck you're talking about?" John said quietly, seriously doubting that there was any kind of logical meaning behind what she'd just said. "Because I'm pretty sure that you're not a boy. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed sometime in the thirty three years I've known you." Harry closed her eyes and ran a hand over her hair.

"I'm not _physically _a boy." Harry sighed. "But that doesn't change the fact that I am one." And then, finally, John got it. He looked at his sister's new super short haircut, her loose button-up shirt and jeans that – now that he was thinking about it – did look like they'd come from the men's department. He thought back over their shared life and realized that he'd never once seen Harry wear a dress – not even at her own wedding.

"You're transgender?" John asked, finally. The word sounded strange on his tongue. Harry nodded, her eyes welling up with tears. John didn't know how to react. It wasn't like he'd never met a transgender person before, he knew a few of them vaguely, and just the week before one of his patients at the clinic had informed him while he was checking her medical history that she used to be a man. But still, it was different when it was his sister, different when it was a girl he'd grown up with without ever having any idea. He turned his head slightly, and almost fell off his chair when he caught sight of Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. He'd completely forgotten that the consulting detective was there in the shock of Harry's news. John couldn't believe that he'd just had one of the most personal conversations of his life with his flatmate sitting there the whole time. "Sherlock," He said softly. Harry jumped, clearly having also forgotten he was in the room. She swiped her hand quickly across her eyes, impatiently brushing away her tears. John couldn't believe that Sherlock had actually seen everything that had just happened. "Sherlock could you just leave the room, please?" He said harshly. John had been surprised more often in the past two days than ever before in his life, but never as much as when Sherlock stood up and silently walked out of the room without saying a single word about wanting to continue his experiment. Moments later, John heard the door of Sherlock's room click closed.

If Sherlock had of blindly obeyed him under any other circumstances, John would have immediately called the London Times and told them the end of the world was imminent, but at that moment, John was dealing with something so much more pressing that he couldn't even give it much thought. He looked back up at Harry. "Are you going to have… surgery?" John asked. Harry nodded again.

"Yeah," She said. "I'm hoping to transition all the way by next year. I've been taking hormones for ages now, and I'm scheduled to have my breasts removed in two weeks. That's why I knew I needed to tell you now. I didn't want to suddenly have no breasts the next time you saw me." John nodded, his head still spinning. "So, is this… is it… okay?" Harry asked quietly. John thought about that. _Was_ this okay? It was shocking, yeah, and completely out of the blue, but how did he actually feel about it? How did he feel about the fact that his sister was maybe actually his brother? John was pretty sure he was okay with it. He and Harry had never had the best relationship, but she was his sister (or… brother?) nonetheless. Finally, he nodded.

"Yeah I think so." John said. "I mean, it's weird, and it'll take some getting used to, but I think it's okay." A single tear slipped down Harry's cheek. She – he (God that was going to take some getting used to) – looked up at John.

"It wasn't okay with Clara." Harry said softly. "That's why we got divorced. I'd always thought that I could hide it, just suck it up and live as a woman, live a normal life, but I was going crazy. I spent all my time on these online support groups, and I met a girl who was okay with it on one of those. I started secretly seeing her behind Clara's back, and I started drinking way more than I ever had, just because I didn't know what else to do. So one day, Clara catches me with the other woman and we have this massive fight. I broke down and told her what I was, and she just shut down. Said she couldn't stay with me if I was like that. I tried to work it out with her, but she kicked me out a few days later." Harry was crying in earnest now, and John had no idea what to do. He reached out and wrapped his arms around Harry, letting her cry into his shoulder.

"Shhh, Harry," He whispered for lack of anything better to say. "Shhh, it'll be alright." John didn't know how long he sat there rubbing Harry's back before she finally cried herself out. She straightened up, and wiped the tears off her face. "Do you want to sleep here tonight?" John asked, not at all sure if it was safe for Harry to be alone just then. "We have an absurdly comfortable couch if you want it." Harry smiled at him and shook her head.

"Thanks Johnny, but I'm fine." She said. "I have to work early tomorrow, and you've already done enough for me tonight." John opened his mouth to protest, but Harry cut him off. "Seriously John, You've already done so much more for me than I could have hoped. I can't even tell you how much it means to me that you're okay with this, now I'll at least have someone to fall back on if mum completely freaks out." John couldn't help the uncomfortable feeling that that was by far the most probable outcome. He senses that he would be receiving another furious phone call in the near future.

"You're sure you're all right?" John asked, eying Harry up and down. He was surprised to see that Harry did look alright. Her face seemed more relaxed and open than he's ever seen it. Harry nodded.

"I should probably go. I think I've given you enough to deal with already." Harry said. "Thanks so much for being okay with this, Johnny." She said as they walked to the front door of the flat.

"Don't mention it." John said. "We'll have to see each other more often now, if we want to stand as a united front against mum."

"Yeah, so I'll see you soon?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," John answered. "Take care of yourself, Harry." Harry smiled and pushed the door open. After she left, John stood in the doorway, watching his sister's back retreat down the stairs. Or, well, he supposed that brother was the correct term now. God, this really was going to take some getting used to.


End file.
